


Prompt: Trapped

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: BatFam Week 2018 [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfam Week 2018, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Buried Alive, Claustrophobia, Gen, GoodDad!Bruce, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Rated for harrowing situation, brief but intense suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 18:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15491670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: BatFam Week 2018, Day Two. Prompt: TrappedYes, the prompt is "trapped" and it's a Jason fic. I'm so, so sorry. (Not really, though.) Please see tags for potential triggers.





	Prompt: Trapped

_Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up._

A panicked whine whistled through the dark. Jason could feel the path it had carved up the inside of his chest to slip between his teeth.

He lashed out, feet and hands striking something hard, unyielding. Not cloth and wood, not a coffin lid, but close. Too close. It was happening again. He was buried. Buried in the dark with the bugs and the worms and the dirt. 

Jason’s mouth and throat were coated thick with dust, making him gag and choke as he let out a ragged scream. He struck out again, gloved hands and boots slamming against something immovable and gritty. Concrete?

The building. The building had fallen on him. There'd been an explosion. That’s why his ears were ringing, not just the silence that made his brain claw at the stifling dark for input.

Not a dream. And not underground. Not in a coffin. Not dead. But still buried.

Jason gagged again, saliva and tears mingling with the sweat on his face. He swung his arm in a panic, forearm slamming against the wall of rubble. Nothing moved, but his arm screamed, so he joined it.

He screamed for help. He screamed that he was still alive. He screamed pleas. He screamed names. He screamed wordless, bestial fears into the dark. The dark took them all and gave nothing back.

Jason clawed at the rubble until the broken concrete and rebar bit through his gloves and chewed on his hands, sending warm blood oozing into his sleeves. He screamed until even opening his mouth pushed his body into a coughing fit, and he was forced to slump back against the one standing wall.

For the first time since the Pit had returned his sanity, Jason thought of the soft, loamy soil that covered his burial plot and wished that he was there instead of where he was. He could claw his way out of the mud and muck and do it gladly if it meant he would be out. There was no forcing himself free from this hole, not this time.

He wouldn’t stay here. He wouldn’t die here like this, pinned like a beast in a trap, forced to wither and die of dehydration and starvation and madness.

Jason dragged his hand over his face, smearing sticky blood over his eyes and cheeks to be diluted by tears and snot. He reached to his waist, heart stuttering with relief as his fingers touched the butt of his gun. He hadn’t lost it in the fight. Good. If he had to die, he would die his own way. And he wouldn’t come back.

When the groan rumbled next to him, Jason thought for a moment that he had already pulled the trigger and woken up in hell. It had certainly sounded like a moan of the damned. A hand shot out of the dark and clamped around his wrist, cold fingers against a wild pulse.

Jason shrieked and wrenched away, scrambling backward on all fours until he slammed against the rubble wall.

The rubble wall. He was still here. He wasn’t dead. At least, not yet. Then what—

Another groan, low and pained, rolled through the dark, followed by the shifting of a body against a concrete floor.

“Jason?”

The voice was hoarse. The hair on Jason’s arms stood on end.

“Bruce?”

Bruce was _here_? Why? How? Bruce belonged in the dark, but not in the dirt.

“Are you hurt?”

"Trapped,” Jason rasped. His dry tongue clung to the roof of his mouth and he smacked them together as panic forced his fears into words. “Trapped, I’m trapped. It’s dark, Bruce. I can’t see. I can’t see, can’t get out. I can’t—I can’t—”

“Jason.”

That was him. Good, good, that was good, dead people didn’t know their own name, because they were dead, but he was going to _be_ dead because he couldn’t see and couldn’t get out and oh god he was _buried_ again—

“ _Jason_.” This time, when the hand grabbed him, reaching through the black to wrap around his ankle, Jason jerked only slightly and didn’t pull away.

He’d been angry with Bruce, before, during the fight that had led them here. He couldn’t remember why. Didn’t matter. It was another evolution cycle of the same argument. He couldn’t remember the last time Bruce had meant anything other than disappointment, betrayal, and a rage he couldn’t extinguish. Broken bones and broken promises.

But here in the dark, when Jason sobbed out “ _Bruce_ ,” it was like a distant flash of hope, the circling beam of a lighthouse in the storm. Because Bruce had never been here before. No matter where Jason had cried out for him—in a warehouse in Ethiopia, in a muddy grave, on the banks of the Pit—Bruce had never been _here_.

“Status report,” Bruce ordered, and that too, for the first time in years, was welcome. Jason clung to the order like his life depended on it. With the gun waiting inches from his twitching fingertips, perhaps it did.

“Fine.” The word was little more than a croak, so Jason swallowed painfully and tried again. “Uninjured. I can move. But we’re—the building—I can’t—I’ve been screaming and no one—”

Bruce’s hand tightened on his ankle. “Good,” he said, and Jason knew he meant the lack of injuries. Like being buried alive was no problem at all.

“Can you come to me?” Bruce said, an order dressed with a question. “I’m a little... stuck.”

Bruce let go of his leg and Jason crawled forward, feeling his way until his hands touched the sharp point of a cowl ear. Bruce was on his back, less than spitting distance from where Jason had first woken up. The space was tiny, and Jason had only missed him because Bruce had fallen away from Jason, probably flung by the force of the destruction.

When Jason’s hands reached his shoulders, Bruce took his wrists gently.

“Jay.” Bruce’s voice was as gentle as his touch, a warm, fatherly rumble that Jason sometimes remembered in his dreams but never heard when he was awake. Not anymore, anyways. “We’re going to be okay. Do you hear me?”

Bruce moved his hand up Jason’s arm until he could cup the back of Jason’s skull with one hand, his fingers weaving into Jason’s sweaty curls. “Answer me. Do you hear me?”

Bruce couldn’t say that. He couldn’t promise everything would be okay, because he didn’t know. He couldn’t guarantee. They could die in here, trapped and forgotten. He couldn’t promise that wouldn’t happen. But Jason wanted to believe, wanted to _trust_ for just a moment, so he nodded.

“Good,” Bruce grunted. “Now. There’s something on my right leg. It has me pinned.”

Bruce released his hold on Jason, who felt his way down the suit until his fingers made contact with the broken beam that had fallen across Bruce’s calf. It wasn’t long or terribly massive, but Jason could tell by touching it that it was solid. Heavy. Concrete with a rebar center.

“Can you get it off?”

“I—” Jason ran his dusty tongue across dry lips. “I can try.”

In normal circumstances, it would have been difficult. Their air pocket was tight, with little room to maneuver, and only the gap provided by Bruce’s calf was available for Jason to grip the edge of the concrete. It was a ludicrously heavy beam, and his muscles were already weak from panic and fading adrenaline.

Jason thought about remaining trapped in the dark. Freeing Bruce wouldn’t change what was happening, but his foolish, childish belief in the powers of Batman and Bruce Wayne wouldn’t stay dead. If he could free Bruce, then somehow, some way, Bruce could free him.

In the end, Jason was only able to lift the rubble an inch or two, but it was enough for Bruce to slide free. The small space rang with their cries, and both were gasping as Jason slumped against the wall next to Bruce.

“Y’kay?” Jason panted.

“Couple fractures, but not compound,” Bruce grunted. “Pretty sure. Concussion. Maybe a broken rib or two.”

Could be worse. Could be a lot better, though.

The dark seemed to throb red in sync with the pulse in Jason’s right hand. 

“Think I broke a finger,” he admitted, then turned away to cough and spit out a mouthful of dust.

“You said you were uninjured.” Only Bruce could keep his voice completely neutral and still sound accusatory.

“Not the collapse. I-I freaked out. Tried to get out,” Jason admitted quietly. At least he wasn’t still bleeding. The blood on his fingers had gone tacky. He wondered how long that took, how long they had been lost under the stone and steel.

Jason sucked in a breath and strained to see something, anything, other than blackness. It was better with Bruce here, but he was still trapped. Still buried. And he couldn’t tamp down his panic. Like a virus, it doubled over itself at rapid speed.

“We’re going to die here,” he whispered, no more than a breath. Bruce still heard.

“No, we’re not.”

“I _have_ died here,” Jason reminded him, voice teetering like a small figure on a bridge. “In a collapse, under rubble, in the dark. I can’t do this again, Bruce. I can’t. I can’t—”

“Jason, we’re not going—”

“I’m not doing this—”

“Jay, calm—”

“I can’t see.” Jason didn’t yell, but his panic was blazing now. “I can’t see, Bruce. It’s too dark. I can’t see, and all I can taste is dirt and blood, and all I can smell is rain.”

The rain didn’t make any sense, not cognitively. But he was there again, lost in his own grave with the rain beating down and blood running from his torn fingers. He was alone in the dark, and he was so very lost.

Hands brushed his shoulder, then trailed up to his wrists and held them tight, forcing his bleeding fingers to stop tearing at his own hair.

“Jay, stop. Stop. This is not the cemetery. This is not your grave. This is not Ethiopia. You are not going to die. _We_ are not going to die.”

Bruce didn’t believe that. He couldn’t. He couldn’t _know_. But he sounded so sure, so firm and righteous and certain. A wet, ragged sob tore from Jason’s lips as he bowed his head.

“Come here,” Bruce ordered softly. He tugged on Jason’s wrists until Jason slumped against his side. Jason shuddered as Bruce lifted an arm and wrapped it around Jason’s shoulders, grunting slightly at the strain on his broken ribs.

“It’s not too dark,” Bruce murmured.

“Bruce—”

Bruce placed his hand over Jason’s eyes, sandpapery callouses rubbing across soft eyelashes and bloody skin.

“It is not too dark,” Bruce repeated. His voice was in Jason’s ear, pushing back the ringing with the same low, steady tone he had used to ease Jason out of a nightmare as a child. “You can’t see because my hand is covering your eyes. It isn’t raining. You are not going to die.”

Jason’s breath hiccuped. Tears still flowed beneath Bruce’s palm, but the sobs had quieted.

“We are not trapped.” Bruce tilted his head and rested his lips against Jason’s temple. His breath was warm, his skin soft, and the lightest bit of stubble prickled against Jason’s skin. His voice sent a low hum through Jason’s skull. “We are waiting for your brothers and sister. They’ll be here soon. They’ll get us out. There is no rain.”

And there wasn’t. Bruce smelled nothing like rain. Jason reached out blindly, fingers fumbling until Bruce caught them with his free hand and held them to his chest.

“You’re not alone. I’m here, and I’m not leaving you.” Bruce kissed Jason’s forehead tenderly, then prompted, “Say it.”

“It’s not too dark,” Jason whispered. He gulped at the stale air and ignored the taste of dust to focus on Bruce’s voice and the weight of his hand. “I’m... I’m not going to die. They’ll get us out.”

“There is no rain.”

“There is no rain.”

“You are not alone.”

“I am not alone.”


End file.
